Patient monitors, which detect, display and monitor various physiological parameters of the patient, are used in medical intensive care units in hospitals. These parameters include, for example, the electrocardiogram, invasively and noninvasively measured blood pressures, body temperatures, the oxygen saturation of the blood and the carbon dioxide concentration in the breathing gas.
The patient monitors used up to now have a control and display unit, among other things, for the graphic or numeric display of the measured parameters and for displaying alarms. In addition, the user has the possibility of configuring the patient monitor via the control and display unit, for example, in respect to the alarm limits, the layout of the display screen and parameter settings.
In many hospitals, the patient monitors are connected to one another via a network, so that the transmission of data to a PC or to a patient monitor located at another site in the hospital is possible. The prior-art patient monitors offer the possibility of displaying parameters and alarms, acknowledging or muting alarms and of changing configurations via another patient monitor or via a PC. Besides patient monitors which process only physiological parameters of the patient and can therefore be called passive devices, active medical workstations, which assume therapy functions, are used as well, depending on the clinical picture.
Such active therapy devices or therapy modules are, for example, respirators (also known as ventilators), hereinafter called ventilation modules for short, and syringe and infusion pumps, hereinafter called infusion modules for short.
Infusion pumps supply the patient with drugs, food or other solutions via an intravenous access and usually have an integrated control and display unit of their own.
Respirators support the patient's spontaneous breathing when needed or replace it entirely. These devices also have a control and display unit of their own, which is arranged on one side of the patient's bed. There are therapy modules for which remote control is available, so that the activation/deactivation of selected clinical routine functions such as alarm muting is also possible from the second side of the bed facing away from the device. This enables the user to optimize work procedures at the bedside.
Besides patient monitors and therapy modules, a patient data management system (PDMS), hereinafter called patient data system for short, is usually used in clinical intensive care units.
This is a program with functions, for example, therapy planning and therapy documentation, care planning and care documentation, detection and management of physician's reports, findings, laboratory data, diagnoses, ventilation data, vital data, and characteristics for the treatment. The patient data system runs, in general, on a separate computer, typically on a PC.
The computer for the patient data system is connected to a network. Devices that can be connected to a separate network for patient monitors besides the network for the patient data system are commercially available. These devices combine the function of the control and display unit of a patient monitor with access to a patient data system. The combination of the control and display unit of a therapy module with a patient data system is not known. The large number of patient monitors, therapy modules, computers for patient data systems that are used in an intensive care unit are connected to a corresponding number of control and display units. These cause costs, must be positioned at the bedside and usually have different control concepts. The latter leads to a considerable effort for training the users and increases the probability of operating errors.
The central operation of a system comprising modules for patient monitoring, ventilation, infusion and anesthesia is described in the patent applications WO 0020050523 and WO 00200505024.